Healing and liberation through sweet water: Centering nature in psychology's decolonizing journey

This article captures the decolonial praxis of remembering and building relationships of reciprocity that engage the river as a living entity. For many communities, a close and reciprocal relationship with nature has been pivotal to surviving state violence. This relationship deviates from the transactional and exploitative practices with the natural world stemming from colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist systems (A. Escobar, 2016; Favaron & Bensho, 2020; Rivera Cusicanqui, 2012). An introduction to Oshun, the Yoruba spiritual entity represented by the river, will be shared to identify the psychological and spiritual healing power of being in a relationship with sweet waters. An account of survivors of state violence practices of care and protection for and with the river is then explored through the collective justice efforts of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian river communities. Through a healing justice lens that challenges Eurocentric dichotomies between the human and nonhuman, the body and spirit, as well as healing and justice, this article will demonstrate the important role rivers have in the way communities remember, heal, and seek justice. Centering the ancestral lessons of the natural world, or river pedagogies as referred to them by the author, will be conducted as a process of building liberation psychology's decolonial epistemologies and practices in the midst of ongoing violence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).